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Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

Is their a new way to treat mites. Just wondering because they took Taktic off the market.

Why don't you have someone toss it over the border fence like the rumor suggests many other folks happen to be doing.

Did hear that Johnson and Johnson is is developing a new one called "TWEEZER" through their subsidiary division PICKnTOSS INC. From the preliminary reports the product works pretty but the contra-actions include stab wounds and crunched exoskeletons during application by those who failed to have their eyes tested recently.

Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

I will continue to maintain that those who insist on using Amitraz in such an off label manner in who knows what concentrations put our entire honey production industry at risk. Unfortunately there are those who maintain that if a little is good certainly a lot must be better. There are plenty of good safe alternatives to such off label usage of Amitraz. Honey has an excellant image for purity in the publics eye, let's keep it that way.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney

Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

I have a friend who will remain nameless. Professional apiculturist. Works with beekeepers, fruit growers, and regulators. At a meeting of regulators last year discussing amitraz, he said if you want to see CCD, take away Taktic.

Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

In my country Apivar is widely used. Here's a few of my personal observations.

You need 2 strips per brood box, ie, in a 2 brood box hive, you need 4 strips. The mode of action is not to kill mites outright. What it does is paralyze them, they fall off the bees and die of starvation over a few days. If you look at the floorboard of a hive with mites dropped by Apistan, the mites will be dead. If Apivar was used, many of the mites will still be kicking.

Because of this somewhat round about way of killing mites, some of them do manage to make it back into the brood cells and lay eggs to produce another generation. You don't get all the mites the first brood cycle. I've found to really get mites down close to zero, the Apivar strips have to stay in the hive 10 weeks. I have spoken to the manufacturers about this and they told me that at 10 weeks, the strips are still leaching around 1/2 the Amitraz they did when they were new, which is enough, but at the 10 week mark they should be removed to prevent underdosing & encouraging resistant mites.

Using Taktic, solves short term problems, and cheaply, sure. However the Apivar strips are designed to release a steady and constant amount of Amitraz into the hive for a sustained period, eliminating mites, and in a way least likely to encourage mite resistance to Amitraz. Expensive? Sure. So is resistance, when nothing works & everybodies hives are struggling/dying.

There is a lesson to be learned from Apistan. It was not incorrect use of Apistan that caused the speedy development of resistant mites. It was the misuse of agricultural chemicals containing the active ingredient Fluvenate, just dropped into hives any which way for a quick mite kill, that allowed resistant mites to develop as dosage was not controlled.

In my country, beekeepers did not use any form of fluvenate other than Apistan strips, which are designed to give proper dose rates to a hive. 13 years after mites arrived here, Apistan is still virtually 100% effective, except for one part of the country where a group of beekeepers misuse it for years (used 1/4 dose), which allowed the hardy mites to survive.

The take away lesson, is that Apivar is expensive, but used right and not abused should give US beekeepers many years protection. But if any random beekeeper is using Taktic at whatever dose rate he sees fit, development of resistance will be speedy, and soon you will not need to worry about how to smuggle in the Tactic, as it won't work anyway, and nor will Apivar strips.

Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

Originally Posted by Oldtimer

The take away lesson, is that Apivar is expensive, but used right and not abused should give US beekeepers many years protection. But if any random beekeeper is using Taktic at whatever dose rate he sees fit, development of resistance will be speedy, and soon you will not need to worry about how to smuggle in the Tactic, as it won't work anyway, and nor will Apivar strips.

Just my 2 cents

I wonder why we have not seen Amitraz resistance already..... maybe no one speaks about it.... shhhh.

“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled.” - The Quran

Re: Is their a new way to treat mites?

Thanks for your 2 cents, Oldtimer. Good advice indeed.
I work regularly in Cambodia ( in Agriculture - nothing to do with bees). Farmers are sold chemicals they don't understand, where they can't read the label ( if they can read at all) and the result is as described by Oldtimer above. In the west we have no such excuses. There is a place for chemicals but they will only work if used as recommended.